Dead Bees

The recent drop in temperature and heavy rain has had quite an effect on the bees- they have not been so active and outside of and on top of the hive there have been a sprinkling of dead bees. They are whole bees so it is not likely to have been robbers,when there can be body parts from the attack- it seems as if they had been out foraging and taken by suprise when it turned cold and wet ,then just couldn't make it back!

Brace Comb

As today was lovely and sunny and the temperature by the hive was 25C we decided to go into the hive to take out the second Apiguard treatment and remove the spacer eke for the winter. It was meant to be a quick removal- so I didn't light the smoker and almost didn't put on my suit because I thought the bees would have started to hunker down for the winter. They have been busy in the sunny spells taking in lots of variously coloured pollen- an indication that the queen is doing her stuff by keeping the colony on track.
Well, when the roof came off the bees poured out- the hive was absolutely heaving- we were amazed to see that the space on top of the frames in the eke had been filled with brace comb ( honeycomb that the bees make on their own in any space they can!) which was also filled with honey! As this was unexpected we decided the only thing to do was to remove the Apiguard tray and leave the eke in place so the bees still had the extra stores they had collected, then maybe try to get some advice about whether we should remove the comb now or leave it until the spring.